That’s it – the last design entry for the new openBC profil page has been submitted. Now the final voting phase of the openDESIGN challenge begins: Until September 10th, you can vote for your favorite finalist (and win a 6 month premium membership). The jury will then pick the final winner from this list of the top 5.

Ok, we didn´t win the netsoccer beach clash award last weekend, but at least we´ve beaten the winner of the last 2 years: ebay/skype! 3:0! But the good news doesn´t stop there: we´ve made it into the quarter finals. Hardened by our ac the freezing cold and rainy weather couldn´t sap our energy. Far from it!  And although we had 3 injured, we all entered the bar just in time for the party to start.

The Champs

more pics

The list is unsurprising and incomplete. Businessweek must have had the same thought and is inviting you to let them know on which social networking site you set your bookmark on.

Now, unsurprisingly as well I had the idea suggesting openBC… let´s see if they are interested in successful non-American business models. Sure, we´re not starting a revolution, but I would be more than happy, if you would give your vote a voice suggesting openBC.

Amongst others, I´ve sent these four arguments:

The largest business social network in Europe and Asia, openBC has been profitable since its 3rd month of existence. A large percentage of openBC´s users pay $7.50/month for membership, making openBC the world’s largest paying business networking online community.

openBC has been recognized as one of Web 2.0’s hottest startups by Business 2.0/CNN Money and one of Europe’s “Top 100” by the Red Herring Magazine in 2006.

The openBC platform serves as the infrastructure for corporate groups, including IBM, McKinsey, Accenture and others.

openBC is a 100% ad-free zone. openBC passionately guards the rights of its members not to be irritated by advertisements or by people trying to exploit them for their contacts.

Great to see how much thought and dedication some people put into the openDESIGN project. In his blog Christian Jung lets us follow the evolvement of his design idea, which is about more than just the openBC profile page…

…but also about the openBC logo…

…and the start page:

The whole team is discussing his ideas at the moment and we think that he has some really  good and creative ideas. Rumours has it that Lars invited Christian Jung for a steak at Block House.

don´t click!

(thanks micro persuasion)

The Winner List:
dabbledb.com, theadcloud.com, spurl.net, myheritage.com, metacafe.com, zohowriter.com, muti.co.za, bokee.com, douban.com, cyworld.nate.com, toodou.com, gnoos.com.au, nooked.com, last.fm, openbc.com, habbohotel.com, quintura.com, allpeers.com, feeds2.com, beta.plazes.com, cocomment.com, wikio.com, netvibes.com

Christophe explains the interface of openBC and how he uses it.

BusinessWeek online

Waging War Against Click Fraud

As fraud undermines faith in pay-per-click Web ads, search engines, advertisers, and Web hosts are wrangling over what to do.

When it comes to click fraud, search engines are on the defensive. In lawsuits, advertisers accuse Internet companies of failing to adequately guard against a practice that’s lining the pockets of scam artists and artificially inflating ad rates.

Every movie has it´s out-takes and so do design competitions. We found this in our inbox today…uhmm, somehow I am afraid that we can´t upload this design. If you want to see what´s going on with our design competition click here.

Dear Sir or Madam:
Thank you for your kind attention.
We are a leading manufacturer/exporter on scooter and motorcycle and auto parts and spare parts for Asia. We are in a growing market situation because of our competitive prices as well as excellent quality. We produce a wide range of products as below.

…and their taste does indeed differ a bit! Here are the winners from week 1 to 3 plus some quotes on what the jury liked about their designs:

Week 1: “Clear & straight forward” by Patrick Queisler

“Very good navigation, nice connections, good use of space, doesn’t feel cluttered.”

Week 2: “openMind” by Patrick Queisler

“Also good navi, great copy layout in the left column, good center column layout.”

Week 3:  “Bright & Straight II” by Kerstin

“Nice arrangement of page objects, clear structure, no clutter.”

Special congrats to Patrick Queisler who with 2 jury wins and 1 community win is our openDESIGN champion so far. Good job! Enjoy your first 12 months premium membership – who knows how many more there are to come.

The openDESIGN Challenge is currently in its fourth week and it is great to see so many people participating. Please visit the Challenge micro site to check out all the details.

We already have 3 community winners from the voting:

Week 1 : “Bright Evolution” by flaccus
Week 2: “openMIND” by Patrick Queisler
Week 3: “mocca latte (1.0)” by Martin

3 different designs, different approaches, 3 different people. Congratulations to all of you! You really have earned the 6 month free premium memberships and will receive notification via email in the next few days.

Now we are looking forward to hear the jury’s opinion. The jury members currently busy going through all the entries so far. But we should be able to announce the jury winners for the first three weeks very soon. I am curious to see if they will go along with the community’s decision or if their tastes differ a lot from that of our voters…

The jury for the openDESIGN challenge is set. We are proud to announce our panel of independent, international experts from the fields of web development, branding and business. They will help us judge the entries for our re-design competition and decide on the new look of the openBC personal profile page. The jurors are:

Michael Arrington, Senior Editor, Owner Tech Crunch

Chris Shipley, Executive Producer, DEMO Conferences

Cal Henderson, Yahoo! Inc., Engineering Manager for Flickr

Thomas Gad, Brandflight, Author “4-D Branding”

A big thanks to all of you for supporting this exciting experiment!!

Find out more about our jury on the openDESIGN microsite.

View more photos.

International Herald Tribune On Advertising: A move to anarchy

The so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon, reflected in the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace.com and video-sharing services like YouTube.com, has created a new breed of amateur creators of advertising. And the ad industry, eagerly casting about for ideas to stave off its prophesied demise, is starting to embrace them.